Wave-o-rama Lets You Wave Your Photos Away

wave-o-rama ($0.99) by Nanocritical is a photography app that uses non-touch gesturing for scrolling through your iPad’s camera images. Just make sure no one is standing next to you when you wave to the next picture. You might accidentally slap someone in the face.

The app allows you to access all of your iPad’s photo albums. Users wave their hand in the air from left-to-right or right-to-left to find the album they want to view and then wave from above-to-below to select it.

You can view your photos individually, or see groups of images on a 12 by 12 grid. If you are in individual photo mode, wave from side to side to view each picture like a manual slideshow. If you want to skip past a lot of photos to get to a particular section, wave from the top going downward to access the grid. You can then wave from side to side to scroll through photos faster.

This would be a lot of fun if you were showing off photos to a group of friends. You could set your iPad on display and stand back so that everyone could see it. Then, by waving your hand, you could move to the next photo. Too bad it doesn’t work like that.

While the idea behind this app is creative, the execution of it is pathetic. Not only does the wave gesturing rarely work properly, but the app also crashes constantly.

Instead, you will be frantically waving your hands around, trying to get your iPad to notice you. I waved so much it started to hurt my arm. I tried everything I could to get the app to work properly.

I stood right in front of it, then a foot or so back. I tried using it a well-lit room, and then in a dark room. I tried using small gestures and big gestures. Every once in a while, I’d be on a roll and pictures would scroll normally, but inevitably, the app would crash, or the pictures would freeze up.

This app needs a ton of work before it can be considered usable by the public. Hopefully, the developers just released it too early and are now working on an update to improve it all around. One suggestion would be to include options for viewing photos by date as well. Although it is more important for the developers to focus on fixing the app first.

I want this app to work. It is a great idea. Unfortunately, in the sorry state that it is in, I can’t recommend buying it. It will just leave you frustrated and irritated. I used it on my third-generation iPad and it didn’t properly transmit my gestures very often. It also crashed more times than I could count. Avoid this app until it gets an overhaul.